Kaltura vs. Webex Webinars

Kaltura is an excellent tool IF you have a large library of content. It can be pretty pricey so if you are early in launching an online program you may be better off waiting a few years until you've amassed a large enough catalog to warrant the investment in such a tool. The tool is best purchased by a University or company-wide vs having a single department try to find the budget for it. The unlimited plan pays for itself in most cases if you go this route. Secondly, you must be willing to invest time and resources into on-going training for your faculty and staff, especially for those who wish to create their own media and use the quizzing features.

Incentivized

With the help of Webex Webinars, creating interactive sessions has become very simple. One great thing about Webex Webinars is the option to engage the audience. We can create polls, create some NPS-related surveys, introduce live polling, create emoji reactions, etc. within the webinar platform, which helps us understand the pulse of the user.

Incentivized

• Very easy to use interface for uploading videos or capturing a screen recording. There are very few clicks required to get the media up and running. The video conversion process that happens on the back-end is fast and provides videos in device agnostic formats.
• Integrates well with other systems, such as our Moodle LMS. This extends the capabilities of the LMS and also allows us to keep video/multimedia content organized in a central location (the KMC).
• Kaltura can be connected to various processes within your organization. For example, we have a system in place that allows a video lecture in a classroom to be uploaded to Kaltura in a very easy manner.
• User/role management is very important as some people on campus have more privileges to publish content than do others. We have Kaltura connected to our Single Sign-On solution for authentication and we can assign roles to specific people within the Kaltura software.

• Cisco Webex Events is very straightforward and easy to use. Setting up an event within the platform is quite simple - anyone can do it.
• Webex Events is a great add-on feature to the Webex conferencing platform to allow a one-way broadcast of information, rather than worrying about attendees being able to interrupt the presentation.
• Recording a session is fairly simple and accessing the recordings post-event is quite reliable. I believe you can also upload .mp4 files into the Webex Events platform to serve as a host.

• As it relates to the LMS integration, we would like to see improved workflow. But that may be just as much a Canvas issue as a Kaltura issue.
• I would like to see the ability to add inline, anchored comments to the video timeline.
• We are seeing issues with compatibility with certain browsers - especially Chrome. The faster Kaltura can move away from Flash the better.
• The capture appliance (CaptureSpace Lite) needs to be reconsidered. It's not intutive enough.

Incentivized

• There always seems to be room for video quality improvement (not a necessity, but would be nice)
• Mobile screensharing from iOS/Android (and other mobile) devices would be a great feature
• The mobile app should be able to track meetings a user has been invited to, but does not do so (yet)

Incentivized

The choice to renew our subscription does not belong to us, though we are able to provide input. We are aware of competitive products who have matured in the past three years, and we are aware now of alternatives to conventional plugin usage (LTI).

Webex Webinars continues to provide exceptional value as a community engagement and professional education platform. As long as there are a multitude of event offerings and the product continues to be supported with periodic software and security updates, I can anticipate using Webex Webinars for the foreseeable future. Overall a great product!

Incentivized

My experience with this software is fantastic; it's so satisfying that it only took me a week to go through an internal training program to use this software, actually, I don't think this training program was necessary. Usability is one of the most fantastic features to guarantee the increase of members in remote events.

Incentivized

WebEx is available 24/7, as long as the user has a reliable internet connection and the WebEx servers are up (they are typically up when we need it).

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Fast, reliable, and consistent performance

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The first line support agents seldom are able to diagnose or troubleshoot any problems that we have. These agents simply open support tickets in their system which are escalated to a foreign level 2 support agent which creates at least a day delay between reporting a problem and getting initial feedback. Any back-and-forth questions add at least another day delay.

Incentivized

I love the control that this product gives to those running the meetings. It allows you to assign presenter roles to people and everyone else that is an attendee can be totally controlled, like whether they can unmute, use video or just sit there and watch. It really gives control of the meeting to those who are running it. And we love that ability for those meetings that we are trying to make sure people are listening in on instead of trying to participate.

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The implementation process was fairly simple and straightforward

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Kaltura was the best option given the sheer volume of people we needed to support digitally. Others were better in their own regard, but due to limitations in number of attendees or sessions, Kaltura was the best option

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We actually prefer MS teams as its now easier to chat; manage virtual backgrounds, better audio, and overall more features and tools. Given we actually use MS teams for daily meetings now, it led to us also using MS Events. As a result, we began to consolidate to only using MS teams for both daily meetings and MS events for larger meetings - in lieu of Webex Events

Incentivized

The scalability is really easy

Incentivized

• Managing video content with the KMC has greatly reduced the amount of hours previously needed to manage.
• User issues ie: uploading video, viewing video has been greatly reduced.
• Increased user engagement with using video in LMS courses. We currently have 6,929 videos on our system. Last month , 2/1/14, 17,623 videos were viewed at least 75% of the way through.

• Allowed us to keep our product development moving forward during the pandemic.
• Reduced our travel costs by hosting virtual events.
• Allows us to host more events because of reduced cost over in-person events.
• Helps us with faster time to market on features as we can quickly set up and host a focus group.

Incentivized